gebanks-96085

I never watched many medical shows until I retired. Didn't want to bring the hospital home with me. Shows like House may have had good actors but were unrealistic fantasies when it came to real medicine. After retiring I watched all 15 seasons of ER over a few months. That show captured the reality of ER medicine as well as hospital politics, although it compressed time. Things happen fast, but not that fast or intense over an entire day, and not nearly as many open chest heart massages occur. But you really did get to see what it was like. Now The Pitt brings the same flavor of show as ER was. So if you enjoyed watching ER, you will like this.

I watched the first episode, since I really loved the series "ER." I should mention that I am a retired doc. What I loved about ER was it was very accurate medically. It was the first "doctor show" that I ever saw that was accurate. It is true that some of the situations were exaggerated for dramatic effect, but they almost always gave the right drugs for the right reasons. Even the hospital politics had some semblance of truth.

The first episode of New Amsterdam was all I could tolerate. While the actors were fine, it was ridiculous when it came to depicting the medical events and the hospital politics. The medical director of a hospital doesn't have hiring and firing power, for one. And it isn't possible to just hire 50 new attendings. It would take years to replace that many, and probably be impossible when the new hires found out they could be fired so easily. The medical director also doesn't go around interfering in cases outside his specialty. The drugs given and the care given to the ebola patient were ridiculous.

This may be a good show for fans of "House", where medical accuracy is not important, but I doubt doctors or nurses will be able to stand to watch it.